Many yards from the Gulf of Mexico, dunes at the Gulf Islands National Seashore appear dotted with constellations of oil-contaminated, glowing sand under ultraviolet light.

Describing similar dunes, Kirby said that “dried sand particles that were contaminated by oil were blowing into the dunes of the back beach. If you consider how much sand can be moved in a short period of time by wind, this is a big deal.”

If clean-up workers on a beach are using a net to sift lumps of oil from sand, “clean sand goes through the oily net and gets coated with oil,” he said. “You’ve contaminated another quart of sand in order to get a couple of ounces of oil out, and it’ll end up in the [dunes].”

Published July 8, 2010

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I heard an interesting thing today…. that Czechoslovakia has – and not recently – legalised drugs. Small amounts on your person for personal use. 15 grams of MJ, a lot less, couple grams only, for heroin, cocaine and ecstasy.

I had been reading over recent years that Amsterdam has been tightening their laws (nto sure why) on drugs and the old Red Light districts, but that Prague is a new refuge for drug use. Not open selling tho they do openly sell materials and what have you for grow operations for MJ…

It popped back into my mind as I am listening to a dumb as all hell conversation on the Mexican “drug cartels” and how they are moving into the US. [argh Breaking News (not)]

The thrust of the conversation is that we must wage war agaisnt this (vile! horrible! illegal!) incursion, like the War on Terror. Yikes. I think it is called War on Drugs. IT FAILED.

IIRC, I read somewhere that Amsterdam was tightening things under pressure from the rest of the business community, they didn’t like the kind of tourists the city’s reputation was attracting (not spending enough money on the right things?).

I wondered if it became an issue with neighboring countries, or with the formation of the EU, because it goes back decades, iirc.

If i feel up to it I might poke around a bit see what I can find.

On the home[land] front, I cannot tell if we are going to pass the legalise MJ initiative on our Nov ballot. One poll, Field which calls Cali with remarkable efficiency, has ti losing, tho there are many weeks left… Another, PPP has it winning.

A lot of big money is arrayed AGAINST it, from big growers (Mendocino, Humboldt) sheriff and police and co coffers (seizure money that flows when they make raids, whcih they still do) …. and what else. Oh ALCOHOL money. Of course.

Add n Mexican army and Mexican mafia (one and the same, some say!) and… it could be a hard slog.

So much that hapened the night Mehserle shot Oscar Grant has completely dropped from the narrative. Other realities never even entered the narrative. Moving the trial and not televising it, striking for cause and just outright striking every black person off the jury, salting the jury with 4 who have cops for relatives or who have worked as civilians FOR cops…

it all added up.

I will be surprised if Mehserle is sentenced to more than a very few months, as of Nov 5 he will have been in local jail for nearly 4 months, awaiting sentencing. Time served and a few months is all I expect. And several years ”probation”. Hell we don’t keep track of the worst of the worst, his probation will be nothing.

We are supposed to be thrilled that he was found “guilty”, the first they say (we live in historic times!)… hmm I just don’t see that as being this huge band-aid they tell us it is.

There’s always been something deeply problematic about the way war is sold, about pitching the idea of heroism to young men (and now to women too). The Iraq war was sold like it was a pop star, something sexy to look up to, and snuck into video games and YouTube videos, and the mainstream media mostly didn’t question. We saw stronger, fiercer critiques of war from our pop music than we did from the people we were supposed to look to for guidance.

The selling of war has informed our pop culture as much as any previous stars have. Where fame was something that happened to stars before, Lady Gaga launched a full-on assault on the culture and scrambled her way to the top, planted a designer six-inch heel and raised her flag. More so even than Madonna, she has learned her technique from America itself. As much as sexiness, violence and a sense of unease and even voyeurism saturate her music and her videos.

Tom Ewing at popular music criticism site Pitchfork wrote of Gaga entering her “imperial phase,” a line he took from the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant. Something about the phrase is so right, as he notes: “It holds a mix of world-conquering swagger and inevitable obsolescence. What do we know about emperors? That they end up naked: The phase always ends.”

Command and self-definition are two of Ewing’s requirements for the pop imperial phase. These are obvious: like any nation’s imperialism, they require not only the ability to get there but having a concept that can be packaged and exported. The U.S. didn’t create an empire by invading each time; we have imposed our idea of America on the world, as often through selling and spreading pop culture as through selling weapons and dropping bombs. Gaga is not only a metaphor for American imperialism, she is part of it.

But the third requirement Ewing lists is the most interesting. He says, “Stars have to get through this barrier — they need a kind of permission to become imperial.” But a few sentences later he notes that Gaga “grabbed this permission,” calling into question his own definition of the word — if it’s something you can grab, after all, what kind of permission is it?

Does it mean, perhaps, that Gaga, or the U.S. had to make themselves palatable, package themselves well so that you want to take them home and love them, even want to be loved by them? The popular YouTube video of the former Stefani Germanotta, before she became Lady Gaga, performing on a piano, her hair long and brown, singing her heart out, still an NYU student, is compelling but ultimately forgettable — making herself blonde and pretty as well as covered in glitter and couture is part of the persona. The package is all-important, the right colors and shine.

The U.S. cannot drop its veneer, its own belief in its benevolence, or the whole charade falls apart. We are perhaps more dangerous now under Obama, with a sheen of multiculturalism, change, democracy, than we were under Bush, who provoked the world’s hatred by not caring what they wanted. He imposed American empire; Obama looks for permission.

Thinking of pop culture and how the war – and more importantly the idea of war itself – has invaded everything, children who were 9 when this all started are now of age to join the military and god knows the so called economy is the utter and complete pits.

For the entirety of son the younger’s life these two wars have been going on….son the elder had 2 years before 9/11…he’s been working on his CO status ever since…and, yeah, I’m documenting it all…he’s only got 6 1/2 years until he’s draft age….

Evntually they WILL get to a draft, even if it takes 20 years. I see that Rangel, who should have other worries, snicker!, introduced a bill for mandatory 2 year service, not necessarily military, to be compulsory between teh ages fo 18 and 42, FORTY TWO.

Now it is going nowhere fast right now… but it joins the several bills for the draft that appeared after 9/11, one I recall was from Rangel… one from Jackie Spiers, who was a House member at the time. There were several….

Yeah, great “service” — kids like mine will get shipped off to war zones and/or get stuck swabbing toilet or some such, while congresscritters’ kids and those of other connected/wealthy will be able to fulfill their service by drinking cocktails in Aruba…

Fuck them all. Before they are making US provide mandatory service, I’d like to see them provide some sort of worthwhile service for all the $$$ we spend on them year in and year out….

wellll… I noticed that the Dem woman in the run for the primary for the gubernatorial in FL was biting and dismissive of Biden’s recon trip down there, just recently. And she dissed his speech. Think she might have called it embarrassing (can’t quite remember).

Dems do bad walk ons. It just doesn’t work…

NOW Obby and his white boys have sent operatives to the Gulf. Mostly, ti is clear, they care about (as in need) FL in the win column in 2012. The other 3 states, they never had (voted McCain) so it was obvious from get go: piss off you white rubes.

All that glib talk about being pretzel for all, he ends up pretzel for none, but big biz.

I stand by my dual overhead parasite metaphor. Dionne was in the paper yesterday whining about how Obama won’t stand up to the Right. But why should he? The Democrats NEED these people to help define the otherwise barely indiscernable differences between themselves and the GOP. And vice versa, of course.

Watching these “cultural battles” play out over and over again is like watching pro-wrestling. It’s all for show, and to keep the yobs yelling and spending money. People like Sherrod are just minor, necessary casualties. Who cares what happens to them so long as the tickets keep selling and the idiots down below keep carrying on as if the performance were real life?

Honestly, that shit article I posted a link to here a week back (“GOP = “Confederacy”) was what set me off all over again. I can’t believe that people who I KNOW are intelligent in day-to-day life just let themselves be manipulated by that kind of blatant fearmongering. It makes me crazy.

Stumbletongue Tony makes way for the only organization man less qualified to handle the catastrophe he created. Taken at face value, Dudley’s task was immediate and thorough remediation of the disaster. He’s consistently made things worse instead. So of course he’s a candidate for CEO. Where else could he go? It’s too soon for him to run for the Senate.

Paul Quilès, who was defense minister under Mitterrand in 1985-86, has called for France to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan on the grounds that it is no longer an anti-terrorist war but an anti-nationalist war that cannot succeed.

While I’d question that it was EVER anti-terrist… this is at least headed in the right direction.

In contrast, many of the highest-paid individuals on Wall Street have grown rich through activities that have little or no connection with the American economy. They can flourish even if the U.S. declines, as long as they can tap into growth in other regions of the world.

Thanks to deindustrialization, which is caused both by productivity growth and by corporate offshoring, the overwhelming majority of Americans now work in the non-traded domestic service sector. The jobs that have the greatest growth in numbers are concentrated in sectors like medical care and childcare.

Even here, the rich have options other than hiring American citizens. Wealthy liberals and wealthy conservatives agree on one thing: the need for more unskilled immigration to the U.S. This is hardly surprising, as the rich are far more dependent on immigrant servants than middle-class and working-class Americans are.

The late Patricia Buckley, the socialite wife of the late William F. Buckley Jr., once told me, “One simply can’t live in Manhattan without at least three servants — a cook and at least two maids.” She had a British cook and Spanish-speaking maids. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently revealed the plutocratic perspective on immigration when he defended illegal immigration by asking, “Who takes care of the greens and the fairways in your golf course?”

The point is that, just as much of America’s elite is willing to shut down every factory in the country if it is possible to open cheaper factories in countries like China, so much of the American ruling class would prefer not to hire their fellow Americans, even for jobs done on American soil, if less expensive and more deferential foreign nationals with fewer legal rights can be imported. Small wonder that proposals for “guest worker” programs are so popular in the U.S. establishment. Foreign “guest workers” laboring on American soil like H1Bs and H2Bs — those with non-immigrant visas allowing technical or non-agriculture seasonal workers to be employed in the U.S. — are latter-day coolies who do not have the right to vote.

If much of America’s investor class no longer needs Americans either as workers or consumers, elite Americans might still depend on ordinary Americans to protect them, by serving in the military or police forces. Increasingly, however, America’s professional army is being supplemented by contractors — that is, mercenaries. And the elite press periodically publishes proposals to sell citizenship to foreigners who serve as soldiers in an American Foreign Legion. It is probably only a matter of time before some earnest pundit proposes to replace American police officers with foreign guest-worker mercenaries as well.

Offshoring and immigration, then, are severing the link between the fate of most Americans and the fate of the American rich.

At Netroots Nation Saturday night, Sen. Al Franken devoted his keynote address, the final one of the convention,
{So Historic! } to the issue that is the single most critical one for the netroots:
{Ending the War? Jobs? Healthcare? Closing Gitmo?}
{ What are you ? ~ A PALIN supporter? -bhhm}

So.

Former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing has been released on a $1 million bail after pleading not guilty to the murder of Sam DuBose. Tensing, who is white, fatally shot the 43-year-old African-American man on July 19 after stopping him for not having a front license plate. Two additional officers, Phillip Kidd and David Lindenschmidt, hav […]

As the Senate prepares to vote to defund Planned Parenthood, we look at the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-choice group behind the attacks on Planned Parenthood. The group was founded by David Daleiden who is seen in the undercover sting videos using a fictional name. We speak to RH Reality Check's Sharona Coutts, who wrote the piece, "Exclu […]

The Senate is planning to vote as soon as Monday to strip Planned Parenthood of $500 million in federal funding. The vote comes as Planned Parenthood is coming under fire from anti-choice activists after the release of a series of undercover sting videos were published online. The heavily edited videos suggest the organization profits from supplying aborted […]

In Portland, Oregon, law enforcement officers have removed Greenpeace activists who spent 40 hours suspended from the St. Johns Bridge in order to block an icebreaking ship commissioned by oil giant Shell from leaving for the Arctic. Hundreds of activists have been gathering on the bridge and in kayaks since Tuesday night in efforts to stop Shell's plan […]

On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Drake, a former Senior Executive at the National Security Agency, says he was targeted by the NSA because he exposed that the agency had intel that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and because he blew the whistle on a massive secret surveillance program aimed at Americans

James K. Gailbraith says, IMF is demanding a substantial reduction of the Greek debt to participate in any new deal and meanwhile German law makers are refusing to approve a new bail-out without the IMF

James K. Galbraith a member of the working group advising the former finance minister Varoufakis on 'Plan B' says there were great impositions imposed on the Greek government including certain procedures that removed control from the government and placed them in the hands of creditor institutions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump, the man to beat in this week's first televised Republican presidential debate, said on Sunday he does not plan to attack his rivals and downplayed expectations for his performance, saying "I'm not a debater."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. backers of the Iran nuclear deal are increasingly confident of enough Democratic support to ensure it survives review by Congress, despite fierce opposition by majority Republicans and a massive lobbying drive.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will unveil on Monday the final version of his plan to tackle greenhouse gases from coal-fired power plants, kicking off what is expected to be a tumultuous legal battle against federal environmental regulators by the coal industry and its political allies.

(Reuters) - A Super PAC backing Democratic White House hopeful Hillary Clinton raised $15.6 million in the first six months of the year, according to a report filed on Friday with the Federal Elections Committee.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.